For Casey
by Quaggy
Summary: It's not his pregnancy scare, but Derek tries to man up anyway. Set right after graduation.


Title: For Casey  
>Originally published: Jan. 17, 2011<p>

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Before he went into the drug store, Derek took a moment to compose himself. Just like in high school, this was going to be all about projecting the right attitude. He learned that early. Casey never did. Or, at least, she could never pull it off for very long. She was too honest to live with that sort of self-deception, brief flirtations with cheerleading aside.

Actually, very little self-deception was required on his part. He wasn't buying a pregnancy test, because he was the potential father, after all. He was honestly doing this for someone else. Someone very important to him. Someone who he would do absolutely anything for. Not that he would ever admit it. All he had to remember that this was for Casey, because she... No. He better not go down that road.

It was best to ignore the details and stick to the facts. They were eighteen. Old enough vote and serve in the military. Old enough to get married. Buying a pregnancy test at eighteen wasn't as tawdry as it would have been a year or two earlier. But Casey would have been mortified anyway. And he didn't do mortified, especially when he hadn't done anything wrong in the first place. That's why he had to do this for her.

The house was silent when he returned. George and Nora were at work, thank god. George had a case that was growing increasingly demanding and Nora was trying to put in as many hours as she could before the baby arrived. If either had been home this morning... well, it was best not to think about it.

The kids were at the mall. Derek had dropped them off before his trip to the drugstore. Liz and Edwin had to know that something was going on, but thankfully Marti seemed to be oblivious. If everything turned out okay, then he and Casey would join them and their parents would be none the wiser. If things went to hell even more than they already had, then... they would just cross that bridge when they came to it.

He went directly to the upstairs bathroom and knocked gently on the door. Everything was quiet just long enough to make him wonder if anyone was even in there, but then he heard some shuffling inside. Casey, her face pale and tight with worry, opened the door just wide enough to take the bag with a mumbled word of thanks and then quickly shut the door again. He didn't move for a few minutes, not sure what he should do next. Then, through the closed door, he could hear her read the directions out loud in a low voice. With a sigh, he went to sit on the steps leading to the attic. She joined him after a few minutes, programming the timer on her phone.

She looked completely shaken, though she was trying to hide it. For his benefit, he realized. And that was enough for him to throw out his rules about touching and displays of affection to pull her into an awkward half-hug. She let her head fall against his shoulder and he could feel some of her tension ooze out of her. There were a million things he wanted to say, but he didn't know how to start. His callous doofus routine wasn't going to cut it with something like this and that left him without a way of helping. He was no good with the serious, sincere stuff. But Casey knew that and was letting him comfort her anyway, so at least he had that going for him.

It felt like they sat like that forever, when Casey's alarm went off. She shot him a worried look as she took a shaky breath and made her way to the bathroom. She took another deep breath and then gently knocked on the door.

"Em? Em, will you let me in?" she called out when she got no response . After few more minutes, Casey glanced back at Derek, biting her lower lip. He nodded encouragingly, rising to his feet just in case she needed him to break the door down or something. Casey knocked on the door one more time. "Em? I'm coming in," she said in her best mom voice and proceeded to do just that.

He didn't hear any cheering or relieved laughter, which was a bad sign. But he also didn't hear any sobbing or hysterics, so there was that. He slowly walked down to the bathroom and hovered by the door.

"Two no's, one yes," Casey said softly when she saw him standing there. Emily, who had been staring at the three tests as if they were about to explode, let out a little shuddering sob. Casey put her arm around her. "It's okay, Em. It's probably just a false positive. We'll make an appointment at a women's clinic and find out for sure. Don't worry."

"Emily, you're going to have to tell him," Derek stated flatly, causing both girls to jump and look at him. "If you're going to be making an appointment and freaking out in the waiting room, then I think the prospective father should be with you."

"I... I don't know his phone number," Emily said, nervously. Casey started to say something, but then thought better of it.

Derek sighed and took out his cell phone. It was up to him, then. He could feel the girls staring at him, but he kept his eyes trained on nothing at all as called one of his more gossipy teammates.

"Yo, Bill. What's up? Listen. Do you have Shlepper's contact info? Cool. A hoodie got left in my car that I think has to be his. Yeah, that's the one." He snapped his fingers at Casey, who passed him her cell phone with only a glare at his lack of manners and that was more for the form of things than out of real ire. "Thanks, man. Later."

"How did you know..." Emily's voiced trailed off, bewildered and a little embarrassed. Casey's expression was a combination of astonishment and bit of annoyance that she didn't put things together earlier.

"It was pretty obvious," Derek said with a roll of his eyes as he pushed the send button on Casey's phone and passed to Emily like it was a live grenade.

"Ack... Um, hello? Sheldon? No, it's Emily. Emily Davis... Of course. I... Yeah." Whatever Sheldon was saying suddenly transformed Emily from a nervous wreck into a puddle of goo. Casey smiled a little and pushed Emily down the hall into her room to give her some privacy.

Derek went back to sit on the attic steps. With a sigh, Casey sat down next to him, closer than before so that it was natural for him to put his arm around her again.

"I knew something was up," Casey said. "Emily hasn't been herself for weeks. But I never imagined that it because she and Sheldon had hooked up. I thought he was still in Newfoundland."

"He came up for Tinker's graduation party."

"Yeah, I had forgotten he was even there."

"Not so surprising, given that we spent most of that party arguing."

"Yeah. I'm sorry, Derek. Emily was _your _girlfriend. If we hadn't been fighting, you would have been paying more attention to her. Maybe she wouldn't have gone off with Sheldon if she wasn't feeling so left out."

"It was the other way around. She disappeared first, probably to say hi to Sheldon. I got bored and so I picked a fight with you." Derek sighed. "It was a strange way of dating someone, anyway. I mean, other than the titles and the occasional make-out session, it didn't feel like we were dating at all. We did everything in a group. Even when we broke up, we didn't actually talk about it. It was more like we just stopped hanging out as much and everything else was assumed. When I looked back, I realized that things had changed after Tinker's party. It wasn't too hard to figure out what happened after that."

"That she cheated on you," Casey said, sadly.

"Yeah, I should probably be pissed off about that. But, even though I'm pretty much allergic romance, I do get the idea of soul-mates. And it seems like Emily's is Sheldon. I never claimed to understand how the universe worked, but apparently it has a sense of humour," Derek said, making Casey smile.

But just because he understood, didn't mean he wanted to play the supportive friend in some doctor's waiting room. Not when Sheldon could damn well be there to hold Emily's hand instead. Though if it was Casey... Even if the boyfriend was there to do the supportive thing, he'd still be sitting on her other side, teasing and mocking and generally being a nuisance. Because that's what she'd need him to do to distract her while they waited. And, he thought as he pulled Casey a little closer so that her head was practically tucked under his chin, because it had something to do with soul-mates.

He didn't even know how to begin to process today. Serious stuff like unplanned pregnancies weren't a part of the world they lived in. He may be a "kissing-slut" (one of Casey's better insults... or it would have been if she hadn't used it in an argument where she was defending Truman), but this was totally out of the depth of his experience. While he was by no means pure or innocent, there was plenty he still only had theoretical knowledge about. It was much easier to talk a good game than to do something that would threatened all the hard work he'd put into his carefully maintained image or threaten the plans he had crafted after Casey had entered his life.

It was a little freaky to realize how easy stuff like this... stuff _worse _than this could happen to them. Screw that. It was downright terrifying. He suddenly realized that they're all very lucky that he and Casey made it through their high school years with a couple of suspensions (his) and an appendix scar (hers) as the only lasting damage. And life was only going to get more complicated when they get to college.

"Do you ever get the feeling that we lived in some Disney-fied version of high school?" Casey asked suddenly, mirroring his thoughts so perfectly that Derek actually grinned a little.

"Sometimes. Except for the whole thing about..." His voice trailed off. He still didn't know how to vocalize what he felt for step-sister, even if he was pretty sure she had already guessed, especially in the weeks since he and Emily had broken up.

"Oh, I don't know," Casey smiled. "Have you ever seen that wizard show Marti likes?"

And incredibly, considering everything else that was still going on, he started to laugh, because yes, he had seen more than a few episodes thanks to Marti and he would swear under oath that the two older siblings were flirting in every single episode. And _that_made falling for a girl you met when you were fifteen, even if she _was _the daughter of your new step-mom, seem positively quaint.

"You have a point. So you think—"

"He's coming!" Emily screeched as she ran out of Casey's room, her face glowing. "He's driving all the way down to see me! He wasn't freaked out at ALL! He said that that those tests were highly inaccurate and that I probably wasn't pregnant, but we'd face it together if I was."

"That's great, Em," Casey smiled. Derek had been worried that she was going to jump away from him like he had the plague the moment they had an audience, but she seemed perfectly content to stay wrapped up in his arms. Not that Emily even seemed to notice.

Derek considered asking if Sheldon had offered to marry her, but decided that was a little too close to home to be anything, but mean. Besides, seeing Emily be so excited after witnessing the terrified wreak that she was when she showed up in their kitchen this morning meant that it was hard to be anything but happy for her. Derek could even forgive her for interrupting him and Casey, just as things were getting interesting. They certainly could find a better moment than on the tail end of somebody else's crisis, after all.

Within minutes, the whirlwind that was Emily Davis was out the door to "get ready", but neither he nor Casey made any move to get up. They were only supporting players in this melodrama, but they were both completely worn out. It was exhausting. He wondered if it was as exhausting for everyone else at the edges of the drama that he and Casey used to kick up. But then again, nothing either one of them did could ever compare to this.

He knew that there was still a lot that they had to clean up, quite literally. They had to put the bathroom back in order, head to the mall to get the kids and find a handy public trashcan somewhere along the way so that neither their parents nor Emily's would find the used pregnancy tests in the garbage and start asking questions. But right now, he just wanted to stay here on the attic stairs with his arm around Casey and her head tucked under his chin. He thinks that he could probably handle just about anything the future has in store for him if he could face it like this with her at his side.

"What's wrong?" Casey asked, feeling him suddenly stiffen.

"Nothing," he grinned. "I think I just found the right words for something. And I wasn't even looking for them!"

"Right words for what?

"I can't tell you," he replied and laughed when she pouted out him. "Not yet. I will someday. I promise."

"Oh." She blushed a little. She was brilliant, his Casey. Of course she would know what he was talking about. "I guess I can wait, then."

"Yeah, we've got all the time in the world," he sighed, completely satisfied with life.


End file.
